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  • The Ultimate Fighter, Priest-Style

    THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER, PRIEST-STYLE

    ABC
    http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3805006.html
    Feb 2 2012
    Australia

    Damon Young

    One of the tragicomic highlights of the religious calendar is watching
    Christian priests in the Holy Land beating the bejesus out of one
    another.

    A few years ago, police had to break up a fistfight between Armenian
    and Greek Orthodox clerics, with a marvellously Monty Python detail:
    the cops were, according to the BBC, "beaten back by worshippers
    using palm fronds."

    Just recently, the same denominations attacked one another with brooms
    in the Church of the Nativity - clearly in need of a few wise men.

    Bethlehem police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi told Reuters
    that this was a "trivial problem," which happens annually, and rarely
    leaves anyone seriously hurt. Reading from the same Python script,
    al-Tamimi added: "No one was arrested because all those involved were
    men of God." And blessed are the cheesemakers.

    What concerns many critics of Christianity clearly is not simply
    the physical violence. It is the obvious contradiction between
    Christianity's distinctive message of peace and love, and the vitriol,
    broom fracas and crusades (literal and figurative) of Christians now,
    and over the past two millenniums.

    Jesus spoke metaphorically when he reportedly said, in Matthew,
    "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword." A great many of
    his devoted followers have - characteristically, I add - turned
    the trope into a straightforward command. And likewise for Jews,
    Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus - all the passages on kindness and care
    have regularly been flecked with blood.

    Obviously this sometimes has little to do with religious beliefs
    and values. Many a knight, king or president has slapped a religious
    coat of paint on an otherwise worldly sword. God becomes the grave
    spokesman for chivalric glory, imperial conquest or nationalistic
    profiteering. Likewise for many 'faithful', who clothe their greed,
    lasciviousness or brutality in holy habits, without ever really
    committing to them. In short, some of the faithful are simply con men -
    scripture as sales pitch.

    Nonetheless, many vicious souls are also true believers, and it is
    illuminating to reveal why, particularly in the case of Christianity.

    How can a religion marked by its overt commitment to pacifism - "Love
    your enemies," Christ says in Luke, "do good unto them that hate you."

    - be so aggressive?

    One reason for this is simple mortal weakness: the spirit is willing,
    but the flesh hankers for a heavy hardwood broom. Pushed, mocked or
    punched by an aggressor, even the most faithful cannot "turn to him
    the other cheek," as Jesus is reported to have said in Matthew. Basic
    survival instincts kick in, and violence incites violence. Whether
    explained by excess passion, deficient logic, or a combination of
    the two, the symptoms are the same: a knowing failure to practice
    what one preaches.

    Another cause of holy violence is scriptural and institutional
    diversity. Holy books and churches are the work of many individuals
    and groups, and some are more violent and covetous than others. The
    most obvious example of this is the Judeo-Christian scriptures,
    which include everything from righteous Hebrew massacres ("of the
    cities...which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance,
    thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth...") to Christ as a
    sacrificial lamb, who commands his disciples to avoid violence.

    Likewise for Islam's Quran, which commands the faithful in war to
    "slay the idolaters" in one surah, but wholeheartedly bans murder
    in another. Psychological divisions in Holy Land priests reflect
    divisions within their religion, which recommends war and peace
    with equal symbolic power. And as theology is often the servant of
    political institutions - faiths, denominations, factions within each -
    it takes little for political apologists to justify atrocities with
    authoritative passages, carefully chosen from sacred scripts.

    Realpolitik gets the better of simple devotion.

    But sometimes the devout are vicious, not in spite of their devotion,
    but because of it. That is, their fervent commitment to religion
    promotes behaviour that is against the best principles and examples of
    their faith. I suspect there are many mechanisms for this, including
    cosmological conceit and metaphysical sleight of hand. But the
    transformation of piety into hypocrisy is particularly telling.

    It is basically a confusion of means and ends. As the philosopher,
    dramatist and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once pointed
    out, piety is a means of producing a certain psychological end. In
    his maxims, Goethe called this end the "purest tranquillity of
    soul," but it can equally be a combination of clarity, patience,
    diligence, courage - the virtues of the pagan philosopher, rather
    than the Christian saint. The point is that the prayers, cassocks,
    genuflections, bows, yarmulkes, headscarves and all religious rites
    have a psychological purpose: disciplining oneself to develop ethical
    virtues, which cannot be achieved with abstract knowledge alone.

    As this suggests, piety is more about what one asks of oneself
    than what one asks of others. Family, community, nation - divine
    or secular - are the objects of piety, but it is chiefly concerned
    with the subject: making and maintaining a strong, lucid, brave soul,
    who can do the right thing in the right time and place. Put another
    way, we live piously to serve something better than ourselves, but
    we serve best when we are better. Piety is about psychological growth.

    Importantly, this vision can be more or less religious. The Stoics,
    for example, wrote of piety, but their idea of pietas was often more
    directed at worldly moderation than spiritual salvation, however
    hallowed by 'nature.' Towards the end of his life, facing the end of
    republican Rome, Cicero wrote of piety toward the gods. But this was
    partly born of political grief and anxiety, as his Rome collapsed. In
    this, Cicero's religious piety was in line with his earlier writings,
    which defined pietas typically as that "which warns us to fulfil
    our duties towards our country, our parents, or others connected
    with us by ties or blood." Note Cicero's emphasis: piety is not the
    acts, but the outlook that disposes us toward the acts. Piety is
    about cultivating good people, not specifying eternal and universal
    techniques for this cultivation.

    One mistake of the fervently pious is to confuse the two. The result
    is a pedantic and paralysing obsession with certain habits of dress
    or speaking, which become sanctified. One becomes dutiful in white
    cloaks or black fur hats, but not considerate and caring in day-to-day
    dealings with other human beings. The Greek or Armenian Orthodox
    priest becomes more worried about cleaning his church, and who gets
    to sweep where, than he is about his fellow men of the cloth.

    Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews spit on little girls, because their
    clothing is "immodest." The outward symbols of religious piety are
    favoured over inward gentleness and humility. (This in itself suggests
    a particularly Judeo-Christian vice: proudly competing for humility,
    a beautiful bit of performative contradiction.)

    In short, what begins as a quest for reverence becomes dogmatism and
    vice. The good Christian becomes less like Christ, and more like the
    priests who judged him: more interested in institutional codes than
    virtue. "Those who set up piety as their ultimate aim and goal,"
    wrote Goethe, "mostly end up becoming hypocrites." Habits harden,
    and the psyche is left unimproved.

    Of course, this fossilisation can occur outside religion: with
    philosophical ideas, civic celebrations, and ordinary daily custom.

    But metaphysical sleight of hand makes the movement from piety to
    hypocrisy more common in religion. Without a naturalistic guide
    to human flourishing, the faithful use their own baser impulses
    and idiosyncrasies as ideals - each smuggled into an untouchable,
    invisible world, and blessed with God's name. In short, supernaturalism
    cripples piety by removing worldly goodness as a criterion for
    success. So-called 'higher' ideals actually lower the bar.

    Ironically, the godless may have a better chance of piety than those
    committed to religion. At the very least, real virtue begins with
    radical doubt.

    Damon Young is an Australian philosopher, writer and the author of
    Distraction. View his full profile here.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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